After a lengthy period of sitting idle, Apple appears to be giving MobileMe the love this year, first with a web-based Mail update (now available to all members) and a host of updates to their iOS apps, and now the web Calendar app is getting some much-needed love as well.
9to5Mac is reporting that Apple has launched a second web-based MobileMe update Tuesday night, this time for Calendar, now available as a beta for MobileMe customers by requesting an invitation at me.com/calendar. The company is adding new beta members in waves over the coming weeks, so all you have to do after requesting your invite is sit back and wait for an e-mail to arrive in your inbox, and enjoy.
Once inside that walled beta garden, you’ll enjoy a host of new features:
Beautiful new web application
The Calendar beta includes a new web application at me.com with great-looking calendar views. You'll find redesigned day, week, and month views, as well as a new list view to make scanning your events easier. Your calendars will also load faster, thanks to improved performance. The new web application works best with Safari 5, Firefox 3.6, and Internet Explorer 8.
Share calendars with family and friends
You can easily share your calendars with one or more MobileMe members to keep everyone on the same page. For example, create a shared calendar called "Kids" for school and weekend activities. You can allow the person you're sharing a calendar with to edit events, and set up email notifications to tell you when they make a change.
Publish a calendar for a group or team
The Calendar beta lets you share a read-only public calendar that can be viewed by anyone, perfect for publishing an events calendar such as a soccer team schedule. After setting it up you can send the team members a link to view the calendar on their iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC.
Event invitations with RSVPs
Inviting any guest to an event is easy from the MobileMe Calendar beta. Just add their email address to the event (they don't have to be a MobileMe member) and your guests will get an invitation email they can respond to directly by clicking a link. Your event then automatically updates, making it easy to track RSVPs right in your calendar.
Works on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac
The MobileMe Calendar beta uses the CalDAV standard so you can view and edit your calendars using the built-in calendar applications on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac. Please note that support for PCs with Microsoft Outlook is coming soon.
Before you go clicking to request an invite for the MobileMe Calendar beta, just know that you’ll need to be running iOS 4 on your iPhone or iPod touch, iOS 3.2 on iPad and Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.4 on your Mac in order to participate. But that’s gotta be most everyone by now, right?
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